I have a piece of good news to share today. The editor of the forthcoming Encyclopedia of American Folklore and Mythology (ABC-CLIO) has asked me to write the entry for Chariots of the Gods, which will serve as the encyclopedia’s coverage of the ancient astronaut theory. The volume is intended as a reference work for university libraries and is aimed at an undergraduate readership. Unfortunately, due to the publisher’s deadline, I have just over two weeks to complete the 1,500-word discussion of the ancient astronaut theory’s origin and impact on American folklore.

The project, though, has given me an interesting opportunity to revisit some material I haven’t reviewed since I wrote Cult of Alien Gods more than a decade ago. At the time that the book was published in 2005, it was a lot harder to find specific information since there was no Google Books, and many databases were much more limited in their coverage than today. One of the figures I had long wanted to find but never managed to get hold of before now was some information about exactly how many people watched the January 5, 1973 NBC documentary version of Chariots of the Gods, In Search of Ancient Astronauts, hosted by Rod Serling. It was rather difficult to find the Nielsen figures back in 2005, since in the 1970s there was much less coverage of the Nielsen ratings than today, and I wasn’t able to find a listing for the January 5, 1973 10 P.M. Nielsen ratings—which, due to the slowness of data collection back then, were not be published until several weeks after the fact. Just guessing what day a newspaper might have chosen to report the ratings (typically about two weeks later) is confusing, made worse by the fact that most versions of the Nielsen ratings published then recorded only regularly scheduled recurring shows, not one-off specials. Anyway, it turns out that the Columbia Journalism Review reported the ratings figures for In Search of Ancient Astronauts in a 1977 piece blasting NBC for foisting biased pseudo-history on an unsuspecting American public. According to Timothy Hackler, 28 million Americans watched In Search of Ancient Astronauts in its first airing, with millions more seeing the program over the next few years, after it was syndicated to local television stations in the lead up to the launch of its spin-off, In Search Of.... Its first-night ratings were about the same as the viewership for Sanford & Son, which aired earlier the same night, and it had more viewers than the Wonderful World of Disney. Hackler went on to report that within 48 hours of the program’s broadcast, Bantam Books had sold 250,000 new copies of Chariots of the Gods. Those are astonishing numbers by any account, but in 1973 they are close to dumbfounding. In 1973, the U.S. population was 212 million people, which means that 13% of all Americans watched the show, and of that audience, one out of every 100 viewers bought the book within 48 hours of the special’s airing. And it aired at 10 P.M. on a Friday night, which even in the 1970s was one of the lower-rated network time slots. That night, the special aired opposite Love, American Style and a 1966 Steve McQueen movie, The Sand Pebbles. Those numbers really put in perspective the sheer impact that In Search of Ancient Astronauts had in legitimizing the ancient astronaut theory, something that later documentaries and books were not able to replicate. Ancient Aliens, for example, peaked with a weekly audience of 2.2 million viewers in 2011, in a country of 312 million people—0.7% of the population. For the History Channel, that was a huge hit, but it pales in comparison to its predecessor. Hackler’s piece does a good job of summarizing the sheer violation of ethical norms expected of broadcast television in the 1970s, when it was still shocking to image that anyone would purposely lie on television or leave out part of the story:

NBC has defended its part in the hoax on the grounds that the programs were channeled through the entertainment rather than the news division. But this does not appease NBC’s critics. Ronald Story, author of The Space-Gods Revealed, which was published last year and which systematically debunks van Daniken, has said: “I have a big complaint with the movie and TV producers. They’ve said, in effect, ‘This is fact.’ They’ve presented it as truth. It should have been labeled science fiction.”

But more interesting was the reaction of scientists to the sea-change in the public’s views on ancient astronauts that occurred as a result of the NBC documentaries. Hackler was writing in 1977—four years after the first broadcast—and discovered that top promoters of science simply had no idea what popular culture had to say about ancient astronauts:

William D. Carey, executive director of the [American Association for the Advancement of Science], said in an interview that his organization may establish regional panels to monitor and comment upon science programming. Carey said he was not familiar with the "ancient astronaut" shows, but that an A.A.A.S. committee would scrutinize communications law toward "the possibility of intervening in the licensing of stations" that consistently present inaccurate or deceptive science programs.

In April of 1977, three months before this piece was published, the In Search of Ancient Astronauts franchise had launched the In Search Of… paranormal program in syndication. To the best of my knowledge, the A.A.A.S. took no action to oppose TV stations’ airing of pseudoscience. In 1979, Glyn Daniel, the president of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, took notice, and he begged anthropologists to do more to oppose fake history, Chariots of the Gods, and similar bastardizations of science in an address to the Institute and the Prince of Wales in which he decried the fact that the United States was particularly overflowing with pseudo-history: “Nowhere, alas, does bullshit and bang-me-arse archaeology flourish so well these days as in America where foolish fantasies pour from the press every month and sell like hot cakes.” His appeal, though, fell largely on deaf ears. As the Carter years gave way to the Reagan years, the end of the fairness doctrine and the rise of cable television effectively made it pointless to try to argue that local TV stations had a particular obligation to broadcast factual material in the public interest. Indeed, many elites simply abandoned popular media to the uneducated. By the 1990s, NBC and ABC could both air documentaries that were out and out pseudoscientific propaganda--The Mysterious Origins of Man, The Mystery of the Sphinx, and Chariots of the Gods Revisited—to popular acclaim and critical attack, but with diminishing results. Mysterious Origins of Man, the most successful of the shows (in terms of impact, not ratings), attracted 20 million viewers on NBC both times it aired in 1996, but that was 20 million against a population of 269 million people, just 7.4% of the population, only about half of what In Search of Ancient Astronauts brought in two decades earlier. Mystery of the Sphinx, in 1993, attracted 33 million viewers, around 12% of Americans and closer to the 1973 viewer haul. However, thanks to the rise of the internet, email had made the voices of those in the audience who opposed the message of Mysterious Origins that much louder. Whereas people in 1973, or even 1993, had to take time to write a physical letter and mail it to NBC, the internet meant that this layer of effort was no longer necessary. The Boston Globe reported in 1997 that the producer of the show kept a three-inch-thick binder crammed with printed out copies of the emails he received, outraged that network TV would show such programming:

“Have you no shame?” one asks. Another calls their show a “national embarrassment.” Other messages use these terms: a “steamy pile of rodent remains,” “hooey,” “claptrap,” “drivel.” The [producers] are called “greedheads,” “disgusting panderers,” and “ratings whores.”

Within just a few years, cable TV had so changed the public’s expectation for “nonfiction” television through such unbalanced and one-sided shows as Ancient Mysteries, The Unexplained, and the syndicated Sightings that outrage more or less ended as broadcast network ratings fell precipitously, making them less dominant, merely first among equals in a more crowded and niche-oriented television landscape. The networks got out of the documentary game for the most part by the year 2000, ceding all of that territory to cable and cable’s still lower standards. And due to audience segmentation, media companies could appeal to the scientifically literate on some channels and the ignorant on others and control anger and outrage by segmenting the audience to the point that most viewers would never see programs meant for a different demographic. That’s perhaps the most insidious thing: There is now so much junk science on TV and expectations have fallen so low, that we now expect such programs to be pandering frauds. And this carries over into other media as well. No one even raised an eyebrow when Ancient Aliens pundit Linda Moulton Howe claimed this week that intelligence agencies are tracking her every move and that extraterrestrials, who secretly control our government, have “resurrection technology” and are reanimating the dead (like in Plan 9 From Outer Space) in order to keep the multiverse from collapsing. Twenty or forty years ago, someone like that couldn’t make those claims and be taken seriously on television; today it’s practically a requirement to hold similar ideas if you want to be on cable TV.

1500 words is easy to pull off. Start with a 2000 word draft then start peeling it back from there.

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John

2/27/2015 12:45:42 am

Several of my entries were only 800 wordsI have written for several ABC-CLIO encyclopedias (on history topics and I did it to get a free copy of the very expensive encyclopedias-- they also give you an $800 credit to buy other works-- one of the ones I got was Urban Legends which was a disappointment-- it didn't even have the Goatman and the Cry Baby Bridge in it, legends I have encountered in multiple places, mostly among HS kids) The quality of these encyclopedias is usually not Brittannica level! Often short entries leeft out important details and put in unimportant ones. And some had factual errors.
The word length was never a problem for me. I always had to cut out words.
I remember well Von Daeniken's arrival on the scene and read the paperback versions of his first four books as they came out. The evidence as presented seemed impressive but he, of ocurse, cherry-picked his sources and he was a con-man criminal, something that was hard to discerne in the pre-Internet days. The two basic flaws in his theory, aside from everything else, is, if spacemen got earth civilization going, who got their civilization going? And second, if spacemen had the technology to cross space at high speeds, why would they teach the Neanderthals (I know they weren't just hyperbole) to build stone pyramids, etc? Was it to fool us until Daeniken came along?
Good luck with the piece.

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Only Me

2/25/2015 05:59:14 am

"extraterrestrials...have 'resurrection technology' and are reanimating the dead...in order to keep the multiverse from collapsing"

That claim is so stupid, Howe deserves an award...preferably, a pair of bronze underwear with a shit stain on them.

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Shane Sullivan

2/25/2015 07:27:03 am

I was going to suggest an Ig Nobel Prize, but then I found out those are supposed to be awarded to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think", not achievements that make them cringe and then cry.

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EP

2/25/2015 10:43:20 am

Ig Nobel is too good for the likes of Howe. Besides, it's typically awarded to peer-reviewed publications.

We need an award for most spectacular fringe fails. In fact, Jason would be a great person to administer it. (Jason, I'm serious! Think about it!)

Call it Golden... something... Like, what are some of the most misused/abused items?... A Golden Dropa? A Golden Hookie? (After Hooked X, of course!)

Shane Sullivan

2/25/2015 12:16:20 pm

Why, the Golden Library, of course, named after Erich von Daniken's most significant pretend discovery in Ecuador.

EP

2/25/2015 12:19:08 pm

A library is a place, not an object. It doesn't really work as well, imo.

The more I think about it, the more I like the sound of "Golden Hookie" :D

Only Me

2/25/2015 12:37:34 pm

Quick, EP, trademark the Golden Hookie before Scott Wolter does!

As an alternative, how about the Golden Obelisk?

EP

2/25/2015 12:40:57 pm

Obelisks are too... banal... No, it has to be something that's peculiar to contemporary fringe culture.

Shane Sullivan

2/25/2015 12:55:12 pm

Maybe something to do with the Watchers, since, as Jason has pointed out so extensively, they're perhaps the single most pervasive element in fringe culture.

EP

2/25/2015 01:01:47 pm

But we don't have an image canonically associated with the Watchers. We don't even have a visual description of them in the Bible...

mhe

2/25/2015 01:42:21 pm

The Flying Fickle Finger of Fringe Award?

Shane Sullivan

2/25/2015 05:22:23 pm

I don't know what you'd call the award, but here's a pretty appropriate model:

http://user-cdn.spring.me/photos/20120717/n5004edfa5a216.jpg

Or, if not that, what about a golden baby? It could represent a Sacred Bloodline baby, an alien-human hybrid baby, the mental capacity of your average fringe theorist...

EP

2/25/2015 05:34:59 pm

OK, we can bracket the name issue. Now we need to come up with categories and nominees. E.g.,

EP - you left St. Clair off you list of worst meltdowns, surely his last couple nonsensical rants directed at Jason would qualify

Uncle Ron

2/26/2015 01:11:22 am

How about the Golden Fleece
(with apologies to Jason)?

EP

2/26/2015 02:24:11 am

Matt Mc, I left Steve St. Clair off because (in my books at least) he doesn't qualify. He needs to boost his resume :)

Uncle Ron, there already is something called The Order of the Golden Fleece. I don't think it would be appropriate.

EP

2/26/2015 02:36:01 am

Also, Scotty Roberts is really approaching St. Clair territory at this point:

"Jason is either deficient in his research, or he deliberately misstates things in order to draw attention to his near pathological criticisms. If Jason meant the headline to this blog to be based in fact, he is a very poor researcher, and an even worse journalist... Jason gets things so completely wrong, so often, that he has become the poster child for deliberate omission and manipulation in order to sensationalize. He certainly has little interest in being restrained by the facts, those silly, little things that might taint his “objectivity.”"

Matt Mc

2/26/2015 02:53:19 am

You are quite right about entering Sinclair territory, he still has a little ways to go before matching the last few rants but he is getting close. I wonder if he will post a video on how to track website hits using google? That was one of my favorite things His (not so) Holy One did.

Also what happens if St. Clair and McGowans got married, would that cause some kind of bloodline implosion? Or would it be just another case of inbreeding?

Worst Embarrassment:
That's a tough one... Surely America Unearthed reached the largest audience, but the Jan Van Helsing thing has the most you-should-have-known-better absurdity.

Worst Political Use of Pseudoscholarship:
Another hard one. The Turkish Prime Minister is super-high profile, but the Hindu Nationalism is so ridiculous...

Most Laughably Inflated Credentials:
Gotta be Kathleen McGowan. A fake degree is nothing compared to being related to the Lord God Christ.

Besides, I know it's unethical to pretend to have an honorary degree, but in a world where Steven Tyler has an actual honorary doctorate from Berklee... I have trouble getting as upset about it as I should be.

Shane Sullivan

2/26/2015 05:04:14 am

Oh, I forgot to edit the Internet Self Defense/Meltdown category. Out of those four, I guess Scotty Roberts, but shouldn't Harry Hubbard and Scott Wolter be nominated?

Basically, imagine America governed by a hybrid of the Christian Right and the KKK, only Hindu and much worse than that already sounds.

Duke of URL

2/26/2015 05:24:04 am

I vote for Golden Hookie.

Shane Sullivan

2/26/2015 05:49:51 am

I'd compare it to the Nazi party, personally, but that may be because I'm in the middle of reading Goodrick-Clarke.

I mean, literally, I'm in the middle of a page right now.

EP

2/26/2015 05:53:41 am

Cool! Which book?

Shane Sullivan

2/26/2015 06:50:08 am

The Occult Roots of Nazism. I'm on chapter 13.

EP

2/26/2015 07:10:44 am

Those wacky Nazis, am I right? :)

(Definitely check out his "Black Sun" as well, if you haven't already.)

Clint Knapp

2/25/2015 01:08:45 pm

Isn't Linda just delightful? No matter the level of disconnect her source has from a story, anyone she talks to is instantly credible by virtue of having the courage to talk to her. The woman has never met a story she didn't accept wholesale and then fold into the larger picture of her favorite ideas. See how quickly she jumped on the Nvidia crop circle hoax before having to recant almost immediately when the chip manufacturer confessed the stunt.

Her work on half-cats (dogs don't eat cats; aliens carve off their backsides for DNA) and animal mutilation in general is a thing to behold all its own, too.

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EP

2/25/2015 01:19:07 pm

I tend to stay away from animal mutilation. Not because I find it repugnant, but because in my mind it's closely associated (via probings, I guess) with Satanic Ritual Abuse, and that's just the most fucking depressing topic...

Clint Knapp

2/26/2015 03:22:54 am

Oh, certainly in the real world it has those connotations, but LMH does not live in the real world. She goes out of her way to deny there could be any human or animal action involved, often citing the remoteness of a location (ranches mostly) as an excuse to dismiss the Satanic angle.

While her attempts are laughable at best and always conclude that aliens are harvesting DNA for unspecified purposes, what I find most interesting in the whole mess is how thoroughly she reads as a fringe manual for what "qualified expert" means.

A retired Logan County Sheriff in Colorado (Tex Graves) who couldn't figure out what killed a cow once told her that "creatures from outer space" did it and she's latched onto that as the be-all-end-all of authority on the subject solely because he's a cop and cops are observant. The salt-of-the-earth rancher, the airline pilot (by way of having vision requirements to keep their jobs), and all manner of military personnel are rendered instantly credible on no warrant other than their job. Even the son/daughter of a former military man who claims his father told him he worked on alien ships, underground pyramids, or Area 51 is credible because his/her father was military and military men don't lie on their deathbeds!

Given that the woman has at least one show a month on Coast to Coast to spout whatever she likes and uses these arguments consistently, her most impressive work might actually be the great lengths she's gone to in order to reinforce the fringe notion that certain members of society are beyond reproach when it comes to offering their testimonies. That, and that alone, is why I find her animal mutilation work interesting.

EP

2/26/2015 04:21:26 am

"She goes out of her way to deny there could be any human or animal action involved, often citing the remoteness of a location (ranches mostly) as an excuse to dismiss the Satanic angle."

Because cattle never get slaughtered and dismembered on ranches! No, Sir! :)

Gary

2/26/2015 04:44:06 am

The Hook and Crook award. With an Egyptian style design.

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EP

2/26/2015 05:08:26 am

That's the best suggestion yet imo!

Duke of URL

2/26/2015 05:31:39 am

Oo! Oo! Do we get an obelisk and a pyramid in it?

EP

2/26/2015 05:41:31 am

Yeah, I think The Hook and Crook Award is great!

Alaric

2/25/2015 06:08:00 am

"Unfortunately, due to the publisher’s deadline, I have just over two weeks to complete the 1,500-word discussion of the ancient astronaut theory’s origin and impact on American folklore."

So what are you wasting time over here talking to us for? Go! Write! I think most of us regular readers here will understand if you post less over the next couple of weeks.

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Uncle Ron

2/25/2015 08:06:34 am

Agreed! Git 'er done!

I don't know which is worse: the time limit or the word limit.

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EP

2/25/2015 10:45:08 am

Jason, if it helps I volunteer to guest-blog while you're busy writing.

Come on! All the cool kids have guest-bloggers these days! ;)

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Mike Morgan

2/25/2015 04:51:59 pm

"...I volunteer to guest-blog...."

Hell, I thought you already did! Your comments account for 1/3, give or take, of the comments on any of Jason's posts. :>)

EP

2/25/2015 04:56:46 pm

You're welcome to change that. All you need to do is stop being a scrub and produce content :P

al etheredge

2/25/2015 06:28:20 am

The suggestion that TV producers are pandering greedyheaded ratings whores? That must have generated a few laughs around the breakroom.

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Clete

2/25/2015 07:46:33 am

Linda Moulton Howe should have no reason to worry. I don't think that any intelligence agency would waste time and resources "tracking her every move".

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Only Me

2/25/2015 07:56:53 am

That's because nothing involving intelligence has included the likes of Howe.

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Dave Lewis

2/25/2015 04:02:46 pm

good one old chap!

Steve

2/25/2015 08:14:47 am

Okay, a bit OT, but...

The ancient aliens believers don't think early humans could have possibly done the things they did without alien help. Have any of them opined on how these aliens were able to crawl out of their caves and advance to interstellar/intergalactic travel? In other words, who helped the aliens? Or are humans the only dumb ones who required assistance?

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Matt Mc

2/25/2015 08:18:01 am

Time Traveling Freemaons from the moon, they are responsible for everything

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Rob

2/25/2015 10:22:41 am

Freemason here. You have us confused with The Eagles.

EP

2/25/2015 10:48:01 am

All Eyes on Egipt!

Wait, what are we talking about, again? :)

Matt Mc

2/25/2015 12:02:16 pm

Rob, look up Alan Butlers time travel moon living freemason theory I wish I was making it up.

Rob

2/25/2015 02:07:46 pm

Matt - I gotta bring this up at our next meeting. All we do is gripe about the water bill and eat cookies.

EP

2/25/2015 02:26:43 pm

You forgot sacrificing Christian babies.

Oh, wait, that's the Jews :P

Matt Mc

2/26/2015 12:55:29 am

Rob,

What fun is water bills and cookies, I thought it was all about secrets and new world order, these TV shows cannot be lying to us.

Steve, to attempt a serious answer to your question, I think the standard approach is either to fall back to making the ancient aliens into transcendent, sempiternal, or supernatural beings, who just *are* superior to humans.

Which, of course, completely defeats the original motivation of the AA hypothesis, which was to provide an alternative to dismissing ancient myths as pure fiction without taking them as litrally true :)

The original versions of AA, incidentally, did not have them teach humans everything worth knowing. That was taken straight out of occultism.

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Steve

2/27/2015 11:27:43 am

Thanks, EP. I just kinda wondered if they ever got into a "Other aliens helped the aliens who helped the aliens who helped the aliens who helped us" loop.

I don't follow this too closely, mostly through Jason's blog I suppose, but I'm familiar with it. I watched In search of... when I was a kid, and read a few books on the subject. I know of Von Daeniken, though when I mention him at work people look at me like this.

Crash55

2/25/2015 11:46:00 am

I really liked In Search Of. Reruns of it was what got me interested in history and archaeology even before Raiders. It had me looking in reading various books on both regular history and stuff on aliens and Bigfoot. I don't remember the show being biased but maybe I would if I saw them today

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NEW BOOK

2/25/2015 02:19:03 pm

Alan Butler, Janet Wolter, America: Nation of the Goddess: The Venus Families and the Founding of the United States (Destiny Books, 2015)

I lack the proper number of arms required to give this the number of facepalms it deserves.

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Matt Mc

2/26/2015 01:11:32 am

From the Amazon page "Janet Wolter is a writer, historical investigator, and research assistant for Committee Films" I never knew she was on the payroll.

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EP

2/26/2015 02:25:25 am

I don't want to spoil too much, but I got three words for you:

EVERY. BASEBALL. DIAMOND.

Matt Mc

2/26/2015 06:16:55 am

I cannot wait for the new series in which J. Wolter and A Butler go to baseball stadiums around the world and explain the esoteric meaning hidden in each stadium.

terry the censor

2/25/2015 09:29:36 pm

> the January 5, 1973 NBC documentary version of Chariots of the Gods

As someone who was alive at the time, I feel I should offer a bit of perspective.

First, the ratings are impressive but you can't make comparisons to ratings of shows today. Back then, we had three channels -- three! -- plus another one up here in Canada, as well as a few local stations. VCRs were rare, there were no PCs or an Internet to speak of, and no in-home video games. So we watched whatever was on, even if we didn't like it. We just watched; we had no real choice -- and that's all there was to it.

I remember the '70s being loaded with paranormal garbage: In Search of Ancient Aliens was no exception. Heck, fringe docs were sometimes shown in theatres! (As a kid, I saw the Sun documentary of Bigfoot in a regular mainstream theatre. I can't imagine that happening today.)

There were many crappy TV docs on fringe topics, and no end of cheap "monster of the week" made-for-TV movies. The story of Barney and Betty Hill became a made-for-TV movie in 1975. Bigfoot was in five episodes of the Six Million Dollar Man. There was a kid show called Bigfoot and Wild Boy. The Superfriends had an episode with an alien mummy driving a pyramid spaceship (Roswell sliders, take note!). And, of course, Scooby Doo.

And I watched it all! Only because it was there, not because I believed it.

That's why I found the more impressive number that 1 out of 100 viewers ran out to buy the book within 48 hours.

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.

2/26/2015 02:22:15 am

true...

terry the censor

2/26/2015 08:31:09 am

A valid point, Jason. But I would counter that those books were bought mainly by people who didn't otherwise read, not even newspapers. The only books in their houses would also be from things they saw on TV: The Thornbirds, Rich Man, Poor Man, The Andromeda Strain. Maybe some Hal Lindsey books (he had commercials back then).

These are not educated people, likely single, probably not voters, and having no influence on public policy. They are on the fringe. I would contrast these people with creationists, who are also know-nothings, but have a kind of anti-intellectual "community," led by churches or TV evangelists, and centred on one book -- the Bible.

I just think the paranormal junk of the '70s was a kind of cheap thrill, mere entertainment, for kids like myself or adults who had a lot of free time to fill. It's very interesting but not socially significant. This is quite the opposite of creationists, who are deeply and emotionally invested in their crank beliefs, and who cause problems in several areas of public policy -- and are potentially a danger to us all if they get into legislatures or judgeships.

EP

2/26/2015 02:30:05 am

"I remember the '70s being loaded with paranormal garbage"

FREE EDITOR JEFF GOODMAN!!!

http://www.badmags.com/images/myronfass/officialufov3n7.jpg

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terry the censor

2/26/2015 08:33:38 am

EP, have you read either of the Bad Mags collections? I've seen them but I don't know if they are redundant if one already has a few boxes of old crank mags (which I do).

EP

2/26/2015 08:51:02 am

Nope. Can't help you there, sorry.

Joe Scales

2/26/2015 02:32:19 am

The Scooby Doo team were skeptic pioneers of their time.

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terry the censor

2/26/2015 08:34:48 am

@Joe

Only three-fifths of the team.

John

2/27/2015 01:03:19 am

I read the first four books which seemed to ocme out about once a year. They were skinny paperbacks that were easy to read and had a lot of pictures. Back in those days I got most of my books from a rack in the supermarket. I loved reading all that wacky stuff but never believed any of it. That's why I am here all these years later! I also like UFO stuff. My favorite at the time was Incident at Exeter because I lived near New Hampshire. They've recently concluded that the UFOs seen there were really Air Force jets on an unusual training mission but the scenario of some guy walking down a dark road seeing a UFO in a field with cows (pre-mutalation era so the UFO was not flying billions of miles to get a steak sandwich!) My aunt supposedly saw a UFO in the fields behind her house in Medfield, Mass, sometime in the 1960s. She told my grandfather, an eminently logical guy. He told her not to tell anyone. Years later my mother told me.
I'm sure I watched the Daeniken documentary. In Boston we had more than 3 channels. There were four VHF (including PBS which we never watched) and two UHF channels plus you couldf range Providence which had three channels showing mostly the same stuff as three of the Boston channels. Do it was probably on two channels. The FCC forced the networks to move primetime from 730 to 8 in those days creating a missing half hour into which void came a bunch of syndicated shows including that one with Nimoy as the host In Search Of which was probably the intellectual grandfather to a lot of the H2 type shows and the poorly researched but very popular Unsolved Mysteries which still has a cultic following today with people who were kids when it was on. [For example they featured an episode on Travis Walton a guy who claimed he was on a UFO for a week-- it is even on their DVD. But Walton and his brother had been arrested a year or two before for fraud. What are the odds spacemen would kidnap a bunko artist? And how could UM not know this? Later on a spooky movie was made of the same, obviously fake, story. My kids loved the movie. But they knew from me it was fake.)

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JC

2/26/2015 06:09:09 am

What LHM describes is also known as 'the rapture'. Maybe one day she'll declare herself as a born again cristian.
Name for award: Grey Alien Award

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titus pullo

2/26/2015 01:00:13 pm

I was just a kid when In Search of Ancient Astronauts came out but it wasn't coming into a void in terms of frings stuff. I remember reading all sorts of fringe history book in the early 70s. Yes "Chariots of the Gods and the sequals but Big Foot, UFOS, Supernatural ..all were huge in the early 70s. You can conjecture why...I even remember a TV show called UFO which was X Files but cooler with a British twist. 80s seemd to be pretty rational but the 90s with the end of the cold war and uncertainty seemed to create another wave (X Files)...and so on...

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John

2/27/2015 02:37:09 am

I loved that UFO show as a kid although the plots were ridiculous. They pronounced it you-f-oh! and had a moon base staffed with women forced to wear blue wigs and a submarine whose women crewmen wore see-through skin tight uniforms. The show came out in 1970 but was set in 1980 and the star pretended to be a movie producer but his secret anti-UFO command center was in the basement. The aliens technology did not seem that advanced as the earthlings beat them every episode. Also the aliens had to resort to conducting espionage among the cast members. The guy who made the show also did Thunderbirds and Space 1999. I never once watched X-Files because the concept seemed ridiculous (particularly the secret government plot part) so i cannot compare.

Gawd how I remember that program. It started me as a young teenager on a long tangent of reading about the paranormal. For
a little while I was a "true believer" and even convinced my dad that we had to dive at the "Bimini Wall" while visiting there for a fishing tournament. You could stay that was the beginning of my disillusionment with the genre. It was nothing but beach rock without even any ledges to get some lobsters for lunch (nothing better in the world than fresh rock lobster straight out of the water and onto a grill). I then read a book called Crash Go The Chariots and I mark that as the beginning of my skepticism. I am still willing to give claims a fair shake, but I'm unwilling to accept claims without checking the evidence provided.

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I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.